D&D 5E Should martial characters be mundane or supernatural?

[Crimson Longinus]

The lame 5e Hill Giant has over 100 HP and deals 20 damage a turn. And that's only CR 5.
The fact that your basic fighter with a longsword or longbow is dealing 1d8+6 twice against that on the regular is crazy. And not both longsword and longbow, only one of them.

I literally don't understand why you think this is problem. Four fifth level fighters will kill it in about two turns, three at max. Do you want the giant to explode before it has a chance to do anything? I mean if the fighters win the initiative and burn their action surges they probably could do that already.

 

[Minigiant]

I literally don't understand why you think this is problem. Four fifth level fighters will kill it in about two turns, three at max. Do you want the giant to explode before it has a chance to do anything? I mean if the fighters win the initiative and burn their action surges they probably could do that already.

I have never played 5e with 4 fighters.
Never in any edition to level 5.
Then expecting them to all burn their only offensive resources. Or even half of them to.
The way 5e is assumed, the fighter is supposed to be the highest damage dealer (as damage is all they have). So everyone else is supposed to be dealing less.

5th level is even the best time as its were the martials get Extra Attack. It get worse from there were monster HP and AD grows but martial damage, support, and utility barely does until level 11 unless you powergame feats or get magic items. Probably another factor for table burnout. I highly guess that is partially a factor in the calls for supernatural martials.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

I have never played 5e with 4 fighters.

Yes, me neither. Not the point.

Then expecting them to all burn their only offensive resources. Or even half of them to.

They don't need to. They need only if you want the giant to explode before it can do anything, which is apparently how you want encounters to go. But this is pretty easy encounter even if not using action surge.

The way 5e is assumed, the fighter is supposed to be the highest damage dealer (as damage is all they have). So everyone else is supposed to be dealing less.

And I think the maths support this generally being the case.

5th level is even the best time as its were the martials get Extra Attack. It get worse from there were monster HP and AD grows but martial damage, support, and utility barely does until level 11 unless you powergame feats or get magic items. Probably another factor for table burnout. I highly guess that is partially a factor in the calls for supernatural martials.

They gain feats/ASIs so their damge probably goes up. But yes, of course big bumps happen at the extra attack levels.

In any case, how many rounds you think a level equal opponents should last against the party? Because you seem to think that a monster that can be easily killed in one to three rounds has too many HP. Like what?

 

[Minigiant]

They gain feats/ASIs so their damge probably goes up. But yes, of course big bumps happen at the extra attack levels.

In any case, how many rounds you think a level equal opponents should last against the party? Because you seem to think that a monster that can be easily killed in one to three rounds has too many HP. Like what?

Depends on the game's assumption. Feats? Number of encounters.

To me, as the game describes, if a party is metering their resources for 6-8 encounters an encounter should end on turn 4. Latest by turn 5. Provided that the encounter isn't a boring white room.

And that only happens (in my experience) if your PCs powergame, the DMs hand out magic items, or the encounters are boring whiteroom solo monster slugfests.

Because vanilla unoptimized PCs built for flavor not roided up by DM help. Woof.

 

[ECMO3]

The lame 5e Hill Giant has over 100 HP and deals 20 damage a turn. And that's only CR 5.
The fact that your basic fighter with a longsword or longbow is dealing 1d8+6 twice against that on the regular is crazy. And not both longsword and longbow, only one of them.
And this is a lame giant with no special abilities and the fighter who is supposed to be the damage dealer of the party. Thus creating GWM/SS/CE/PAM as must haves as the defenses, offense,and special abilities of monster balloon.

A CR5 foe is a "deadly" encounter for a single 9th level fighter. Your 9th level fighter should be doing 1d8+7 (assuming point buy, ASIs and dueling) and she should have substantial subclass abilities from both 3rd and 7th level in addition an additional feat or ASI from 8th level after she maxed out her attack stat that come into play here. And that is at the deadly level.

To make this a medium encounter for a single fighter you need to go to 13th level where the fighter has 3 attacks, 2 extra feats after maxing her stat and has 3 subclass features online.

This whole I can only do 1d8+x damage is complete nonsense. A 9th level Rune Knight for example can use giants might, get big, put the giant on his ass, grapple him there and have advantage on him for the entire fight while with a +1d6 damage per turn, while the Giant has disadvantage until he uses an action to break it (against a roll with advantage) and this is before I get into the unused feat this whiteroom fighter has. This is just one example, other subclasses have other abilities, but almost all of them are outrunning this 1d8+6 strawman argument unless they are specifically built to bring other contributions to the game in other areas outside of combat.

Your analysis completely ignores subclass features and feats which are part of the game and part of the class chassis.

Even WOTC who claims everyone loves 5e also says everyone hates GWM/SS/CE/PAM as must haves. And they are must haves because without feats or magic items, your fighter's damage is usually awful.And damage is all the 5e fighter has.

They are not must haves and taking PAM makes it a lot LESS likely you will find a magic weapon and be effective with it.

In 9 years of playing 5E and probably 30 fighter PCs, I have never played one with PAM and I have only played one with GWM once (I have played several with Sharpshooter FWIW). My fighters have NEVER felt generally weak in terms of dealing damage.

I think the "must have" feats mentioned actually weaken fighters overall when you take them. You do a little bit more damage, maybe significantly more if you optimize your build around them, but makes for a very narrow character build that is less effective overall when in a situation that does not play to those strengths. This is especially true if your DM uses random magic items.

If you play exclusively low level or with 6+ party groups, you don't see this. But that's how this mess happened. The 2013 playtest focused too much on very low levels.

I typically play with 3-5 party groups and regularly play well into high levels. I completed a 1-20 campaign in July (playing as a multiclass Shaddar-Kai Fighter 12/Ranger 8). I am in another 1-20 campaign currently at level 18 and I am about to start 2 more 1-20 campaigns in the next month (after my current 1-20 campaign ends and a second 1-10 campaign ends).

The Shaddar-Kai I mentioned above was strength-based but did not use PAM or GWM (even though she primarily wielded a magic Maul or Greatclub at games end). She was one of two front-liners in a party of 4 PCs. The last feat she got at 20th level was Mage Slayer, her other feats were Heavy Armor Master, Strength ASI, Resilient Wisdom, Shadow Touched and Martial Adept.

There are problems with high level campaigns, especially with certain spells, I won't argue that, but I don't think the fighter class is one of those problems.

 

[Voadam]

I am probably leaving town with 30 vials of holy water, 30 vials of oil, 10 vials of alchemists fire and 10 vials of acid.

Some are fine with saying they are adventuring around with 80 vials of chemical throwing weapons in addition to their armor and sword for an extra 80 pounds of gear.

Others would say even this Pathfinder alchemist with 16(?) vials showing is pretty ridiculous.

 

[Minigiant]

CR5 foe is a "deadly" encounter for a single 9th level fighter. Your 9th level fighter should be doing 1d8+7 (assuming point buy, ASIs and dueling) and she should have substantial subclass abilities from both 3rd and 7th level in addition an additional feat or ASI from 8th level after she maxed out her attack stat that come into play here. And that is at the deadly level.

To make this a medium encounter for a single fighter you need to go to 13th level where the fighter has 3 attacks, 2 extra feats after maxing her stat and has 3 subclass features online.

This whole I can only do 1d8+x damage is complete nonsense. A 9th level Rune Knight for example can use giants might, get big, put the giant on his ass, grapple him there and have advantage on him for the entire fight while with a +1d6 damage per turn, while the Giant has disadvantage until he uses an action to break it (against a roll with advantage) and this is before I get into the unused feat this whiteroom fighter has. This is just one example, other subclasses have other abilities, but almost all of them are outrunning this 1d8+6 strawman argument unless they are specifically built to bring other contributions to the game in other areas outside of combat.

Your analysis completely ignores subclass features and feats which are part of the game and part of the class chassis

Whose talking about a one on one fight.

It's a party of 4-5 vs a giant.

And in such a fight in a ~7 encounter day, the damage of a fighter with their resources metered out is low unless you power game or get DM granted Items.

Now if everyone novas every fight because there are only 1-3 encounters a day with short rests, the average expectation is different.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

It's a hard question to answer without understanding an individual's (either the OP's or anyone who wishes to answer) paradigm around the balance between magic and "mundane" (martial) characters. Kinda gets back to what @Umbran was saying.

It depends where your understanding & concern lies. For example, you might have at the forefront of your mind – Fireball is way more powerful of an area effect than martial characters lacking magic can muster, and that creates narrative dissonance around my fantasy of Conan cleaving through hordes of monsters. – And that will send you down certain directions of design tweaking, whether it's downgrading certain spells, reintroducing AD&D-style multiple attacks against weaker foes, introducing 4e-style Minions, etc, etc.

Alternately, you might have at the forefront of your mind – The problem is that certain magic abilities empowering exploration, like Teleporting or Flight, have no equivalent for martial characters lacking magic. One can reach the flying dragon or the flying citadel, and the other cannot and must rely on their friend. – And you can tackle that issue in multiple ways depending on where your focus is:

(A) Give the martial character an ability to shoot dragons out of the sky (like "Heroes" in OD&D/Chainmail could). A "Taunt" would fulfill a similar idea of bringing the unreachable enemy to you.

(B) Give the martial character an ability to do Super Jumps, modeling a more mythic or anime style of game.

(C) Give the martial character broad-reaching Plot Points that allow for reasonable explanations of how they get there – addressing a multitude of potential concerns with one abstract mechanic like @Stalker0 suggested from the Buffy RPG.

(D) Let the disparity remain, but ensure there are OTHER disparities that requires the Magic characters to rely on the Martial characters instead. So they mutually rely on each other.

Then there's points of contention, where maybe one person thinks that (D) mutual reliance is already present in the game, whereas another thinks it absolutely isn't, and another who thinks it is imbalanced but revels in the imbalance.

I think the deceptively simple one-liner presentation of the question is unintentionally obscuring a more complicated conversation. Which honestly has tended to devolve into circular arguments, so I understand wanting to skirt around that.

I do think that you can build the fighter to be able to solve all of those issues by level 20.

That would be fine if casters had to earn their spells the same way. Although I don't particularly like this solution because it assumes the DM will include both spells and martial items in treasure to an equivalent degree. If, for example, you have a DM who rewards plenty of martial magic items but rarely awards spells (maybe the campaign rarely features spellcasting enemies), then the game will be unbalanced (favoring martials).

Alternately, it could work if fighters weren't reliant on magical gear to be competitive at high levels. Which would be my preferred solution, because it works irrespective of whether the DM chooses to run Monty Haul or a campaign with few/no magical treasures.

I’m all for characters having to train new abilities, from new manuevers to new spells. Items, though, should not be treated like those abilities, IMO.

Neither. They should begin at Olympic athlete level, proceed past that to world-record-athlete level, and eventually reach transmundane status, where their methods are or should be mundane (at least IRL), yet they achieve results that go beyond the confines of mundanity

In the context of the thread I think if they aren’t creating magical effects and doing things that must be explicitly magical (like below), they’re mundane. Exceeding what RL humans can do doesn’t make them not mundane, in that context.

A thief who begins by stealing the contents of nobles' pockets, grows to steal the weapons off the belts of devils, and ends by stealing the color of a fair maiden's eyes or his rival's shadow. Initially, it is simply a growth of purely physical, demonstrable skill. But in a fantastical world, where the thin skein of reality is more porous than our own, superlative skill transcends the limits of mere physical action, leaving us able to say what was done, but forced to admit we know not how.

This is where I balk and say no.
The thief who can steal the color of someone’s eyes isn’t “trans mundane”, they are magical. Full stop.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

I do think that you can build the fighter to be able to solve all of those issues by level 20.

I’m all for characters having to train new abilities, from new manuevers to new spells. Items, though, should not be treated like those abilities, IMO.

In the context of the thread I think if they aren’t creating magical effects and doing things that must be explicitly magical (like below), they’re mundane. Exceeding what RL humans can do doesn’t make them not mundane, in that context.

This is where I balk and say no.
The thief who can steal the color of someone’s eyes isn’t “trans mundane”, they are magical. Full stop.

Stuff like this happens in myth and fairy tale all the time. That's why I use the term. The transmundane has exceeded the limits of mundanity, but it is expressly not "magic," certainly not in the hyper specific form "magic" takes in D&D.

Epic levels are where we should expect myth and fairy tale to be how the world works, no?

 

[Oofta]

I know it's fine.
MTG Counterspell the card was bad design just like D&D Counterspell the 2014 spell was bad design.

BTW UU Counterspell was a cost problem.
2 mana counter any spell and put the card in the graveyard is bad design like 3rd level spell counter any spell and the slot is lost.


The issue isn't the resistances to B/P/S. That's upset over the easily visible.
The issue is that the fighter is a weapon specialist with a case of crippling overspecialization.

I rarely see this "crippling overspecialization" that you're talking about. Most people playing a fighter pick a fighting style and stick with it. I would agree that 3E had an issue with this, there were certain feats you absolutely had to take. I think I've seen 1 GWM and 1 PAM in public games, I have yet to see them in my home game. I have seen a few players with SS for archers, but that's a pretty OP feat.

The supernatural martial is always over the DM dependence of treasure to counter the games monster design.

Again with the "supernatural fighter"? Really? Doesn't that poor dead horse ever get a break?

The lame 5e Hill Giant has over 100 HP and deals 20 damage a turn. And that's only CR 5.
The fact that your basic fighter with a longsword or longbow is dealing 1d8+6 twice against that on the regular is crazy. And not both longsword and longbow, only one of them.

And this is a lame giant with no special abilities and the fighter who is supposed to be the damage dealer of the party. Thus creating GWM/SS/CE/PAM as must haves as the defenses, offense,and special abilities of monster balloon.

There is no way a 4 fighter party is going to be seriously challenged by a hill giant. On average, just assuming duelist champion fighters, no action surge ,chain mail and shield, the giant will be lucky to survive 2 rounds while doing a whopping 36 points of damage if it gets a second round of attacks in. The giant isn't even going to take a single fighter out.

Spoiler: Quick Math

Hill Giant: AC 13, HP 105, 2 attacks at +8, Chance to hit 50%, Damage per hit 18, Average damage per round 18.

Fighters: AC 18 (chain mail + shield), 2 attacks at +8, Chance to hit 75%, damage per hit 10.5, damage 1d8+8 (duelist adds +2 damage) for 12.5, Average damage 18.75.

4 fighters, 75 points of damage per round.

Even WOTC who claims everyone loves 5e also says everyone hates GWM/SS/CE/PAM as must haves. And they are must haves because without feats or magic items, your fighter's damage is usually awful.And damage is all the 5e fighter has.

I guess all the fighters I've played or played with over the years have been doing it wrong (with the 2 exceptions I mentioned).

If you play exclusively low level or with 6+ party groups, you don't see this. But that's how this mess happened. The 2013 playtest focused too much on very low levels.

Your claims of how dangerous a hill giant are is greatly exaggerated, my challenge calculator puts this at an easy encounter. A pair of hill giants that focused fire could possibly take out one PC, but would still be fairly easily defeated.

Your claim of requiring over specialization and requiring magic weapons simply doesn't add up.